Stakeout
by secretmonkey
Summary: Set post S1 finale. Waverly, Wynonna, Nicole, and Doc set out to rescue Dolls from Black Badge. First step: a stakeout. What will happen when Waverly's plan takes them far from Purgatory, farther than she's ever been AND tosses them all in a car for days at a time? Focuses mostly on Waverly with everyone else thrown in. [Waverly, Nicole] Wynonna, Doc


_**A/N:** **OK, so I really shouldn't be starting another story what with trying to finish my ones for a different fandom, still working on Snowed In, and thinking of another chapter for Rope, but... But I read something online about Nicole eating super healthy and that made me think and then I couldn't get this idea out of my head so, here it is. I tried to mix more humor in with the angst (like the show) and this is my first real try at Wynonna as a character so... First chapter presented in three parts. More to come if folks like it. Let me know (I'm a total sucker for comments :) )**_

 _ **Part One: Silence**_

Waverly watches the snow fall against the windshield, slow and steady, hitting the glass and then dripping away, rolling down down down, melting into nothing. Each one, each perfectly different flake, disappears just in time for another to fall and replace it. Some melt quicker, almost burning away as soon as they touch the glass. Others take their time, hanging on, clinging to cold life even as the inevitable replacement comes ever closer.

One falls, another comes along. There's always another.

Waverly stares out the windshield and doesn't turn, doesn't so much as glance at Wynonna, asleep in the back.

There's _always_ another.

They don't have snow like this in Purgatory. There it's always all or nothing, blizzard or green grass and dusty trails. She can't remember ever seeing anything like this, not in person, not for _real_. She's seen it on the pages and the screens but this… this is so _much_. She tilts her head, leaning up in her seat toward the glass so she can see it come, watching as it falls from the dark, on down through the faint glow of the street lamp right above their car.

It's amazing to her, watching it like that. Waverly remembers enough from her high school science classes, the ones she didn't have with Champ so she actually got to pay attention, that she knows the flakes form high, high up. They're born in the clouds and drift to the ground and even though she can't _see_ them - up high and in the dark - they're _there_ , they're there long before they float into view, crossing into the whispering haze of the street lamp.

They're not about _her_ , they're not about being in her sight to make themselves real.

Waverly lets her eyes drift down, following one particular flake even though she knows _that's_ just silly. She can't see them like _that_ , can't make out just one, not even in the light, so she just follows a spot, watching as they drift in and out of it, some landing on the glass and others making it farther along, slipping off the hood or the window or the door of the car, or settling softly onto the street just outside.

It's covered - the sidewalk too - coated in a thin layer and it's two in the morning so there's not much in the way of people walking and so it lays there, undisturbed. It's a… what did Nicole call it?... a _dusting_. Waverly's heard that before, but she never really got it, but now she _sees_ it, right there, just beyond the glass.

It reminds her, the way it slowly covers the street and the sidewalk and slowly obscures everything below. It's like that thin layer of time and abandonment they found coating everything in the homestead when they finally moved back in, the one they wiped away so easily even if that really just meant ignoring the slush it left behind.

They're good at that, she thinks. Ignoring.

Especially what gets left behind.

But _that's_ why they're here, isn't it? No man left behind. They're here for Dolls and they're here to bring him home and Waverly can't help chuckling a little at the thought of Dolls hearing Purgatory called _home_.

She still doesn't know him that well - calling her Earp aside - and she knows even less than Wynonna about the _whats_ and _wheres_ of Dolls before he was there.

Before he was _theirs_.

She watches out the window and wonders what he'd think of it, of the snow. If he's seen it all before, if he grew up some place where it came every year, like clockwork, where it was soft and light, something _nothing_ ever is in Purgatory. She'll have to ask him, she thinks.

You know, once they pull this off and get him back.

Waverly starts to turn, to reach a hand into the backseat so she can shake Wynonna awake so she can watch too, but then she catches herself, her hand dropping to the armrest and she turns back. Wynonna's seen snow - even snow like _this_ \- before. She's seen snow and she's seen rain (and fire too, but Waverly's not going all James Taylor on this shit) and there's a long list, longer than Waverly really even knows, of things that Wynonna has _seen_. Things her eyes have touched in the way Waverly's fingers have ghosted along the glossy magazine pages or scrolled the mouse through website after website after website, staring at them all in faded, not HD in the slightest, pixels.

"You'd probably just make fun," Waverly says softly. "Something about a kid on Christmas or igloos or some shit and then you'd nod back off and not remember any of it."

Waverly knows that Wynonna wouldn't mean anything by it, she _never_ does and _she_ never did, not even when they were little (meaning something by it was left for Willa) but still… she shuffles back around in her seat and leaves her hands in her lap, watching the snow in silence.

She thinks maybe she likes it better that way. There hasn't been too much of that to be had lately - silence - and it hasn't been until right now that Waverly's even realized just how much she's missed it. It's different now, the silence, than it was when it was _just_ her and her books and her room and even when she was behind the bar at Shorty's serving and flirting and swatting away hands that weren't Champ's (and, usually, ones that _were_ ) and there was all the chatter and all the cracking of pool balls and clinking of glasses it was still just so… _quiet_.

But that was before. Before Wynonna came back and before Doc climbed out of the well and before Dolls barged in and before Nicole…

Before _Nicole_. Period. Full Stop.

Waverly smiles, thinking of how yeah, it _is_ different now. Now she knows.

The silence will stop. It will _always_ stop.

Wynonna snores in the back and Waverly smiles again, shaking her head with a laugh. "I rest my case," she mutters, but she's glad for the break. There's something to be said for a _lack_ of silence too.

She leans back again, tipping her head against the cold glass of the passenger side window, absently noting the way her breath fogs against it. She knows she's supposed to be watching _Doc_ and _not_ the snow or her breath or the tiny little shapes her finger can trace across the fogged glass. It's her shift and Nicole's off getting coffee and snacks and Wynonna is, clearly, not watching a _damn_ thing and Waverly knows it's her _turn_.

She knows Doc is over _there_ , in the diner, in the booth closest to the window and not up _there_ , with the flakes floating through the light, or down _there_ in that dusting along the ground and she knows this was all _her_ idea and she's really not holding up her end.

But she can't help it.

This is as far from home as she's ever been, the first _time_ she's been, really, assuming you don't count the one time she met Wynonna at the bus station one town over for her eighteenth (and no, Waverly doesn't really count that _at all_.) She feels a bit… alien… a stranger in a _strange_ town and, really, she didn't think they came any _stranger_ than Purgatory. But here… _here_ it's all late night diners and twenty-four hour Chinese place and bookstores the size of their house and bridges she can actually _cross_ without worrying (and looking skyward) that the mystical end of the world is about to crash down on top of her.

" _God_ ," Wynonna had laughed when they passed a Barnes and Noble _next_ to a Starbucks _two doors down_ from a Target and Waverly's eyes had nearly popped out of her head. "You are such a _hick_."

She'd wanted to argue but, in so many ways, Waverly knows she really _is_ , but then again…

How many of those big time city slickers (and even thinking _that_ makes her snort _back_ a laugh so she doesn't wake Wynonna) have ever fought a demon or witches or are, at that _very moment_ , on a stakeout with a unicorn, a magic gun, and a sort of immortal gunslinger from the wild wild West?

Yeah… that's what she _thought_.

Waverly might well be a hick (though not by _her_ choice) but she's a hick that helped save the world and she's working on _that_ again and so maybe she's impressed - a little - by the snow and some big stores and twenty-four hour Chinese but, eventually, she'll get over _that_.

Maybe she should turn a revenant or two loose or maybe the Stone Witch, just to see if all those slickers could all say the same.

Wynonna snorts in the back, breaking the silence again, and she rolls over, kicking Waverly's seat and as she glances back at her sleeping sister, a car goes by, the driver laying on the horn. There's another guy, one with headphones the size of Waverly's whole head and he's crossing against the light without looking. He flips the driver the finger (also without looking) and keeps on crossing, dancing to the beat only he can hear.

He hops up onto the sidewalk next to their car and turns, seeing her watching him and he gives an extra little wiggle, almost a _twerk_ , as he walks on by and Waverly laughs, again, as his feet shuffle through the dusting, brushing it all aside, exposing the clear cold concrete underneath and then he's gone and the car is gone and Doc is still _there_ , across the way, and Nicole's still getting coffee and Wynonna is still…

Wynonna.

And the silence falls again but Waverly doesn't mind.

It'll end soon enough.

* * *

 _ **Part Two: Twenty-five**_

The car smells.

Waverly noticed it like an hour ago, before Wynonna declared nap time and Nicole finished her coffee and ventured out for a refill. Doc was already in the diner, settled into the same seat in the same booth he's been at every night for the last few. She noticed it then, the faintest whiff of it but then she got caught up in Wynonna's snores and the snow started to fall and Nicole's hand found its way to her knee and well…

She might have gotten a bit… distracted.

"He's doing it again," Nicole said, her hand alternating between a gentle pressure and letting her fingers trace tiny circles through the fabric of Waverly's jeans. "The thing with the hat. He's doing it _again_."

Somehow (and it was a _struggle_ ) Waverly diverted ( _dragged_ ) her attention away from memorizing the feel of each circle, of how perfectly round they each were, how geometrically _excellent_ and glanced up, checking on Doc. He _was_ doing that thing with the hat again. Taking it on and off, back on, back off, setting it on the table in front of him and the moving it to the seat next to him and then back on his head.

"He looks like he's on a remote control," Nicole groaned. "Like someone's running him and they're just _fucking_ with him and he's _so_ gonna get us caught."

Waverly nodded as Doc slid the hat back onto his head and then, in one smooth motion, doffed it and dropped it back onto the table, just on top of his menu. It _was_ ridiculous and it _was_ silly and it _did_ look like he was being controlled (Waverly had a vague recollection of a certain witch though she doubted old Stoney would have been messing with the _hat_.) But she wasn't all that worried.

She knew they were going to get caught.

Waverly knew that maybe she was the only one who realized it (no) (not _maybe_ ) but getting caught was kinda the point. None of this would work if they didn't get _caught_.

"He's nervous," Waverly said, dropping her hand over Nicole's, stilling her girlfriend's movements cause though she did enjoy them (a _lot_ ), they made it hard to think and that made it hard to talk or, really, do much of anything else. "He's used to being the gun," she said. "Not the bait."

Nicole nodded. She flipped her hand over and laced her fingers through Waverly's. "I know," she said. "But it's gotta be him. Black Badge wouldn't talk to any of us, except maybe your sister and let's face it, Wynonna's got no game."

Waverly peeked over her shoulder at her sleeping sister. Wynonna was the strongest person she knew and maybe the bravest (though half her brave was more dumb luck powered by fear powered by guilt but it was _still_ brave anyway) but Nicole was right. When it came to things like this, Wynonna had no game, not when the name of the game was _subtlety_.

"She's used to being the gun _too_ ," Waverly said. "Purgatory hasn't presented a whole lot of problems she wasn't _supposed_ to shoot her way out of."

And _that_ , Waverly knew, was just fine. _That_ was why Wynonna had the gun and not the books, that was why _she_ was the heir and Waverly was the geek (albeit one with a shotgun and a bit too much a of hair trigger) and _that_ had worked out for them rather well so far.

If, you know, you didn't count the (twice) dead sister _and_ the giant tentacle monster living right outside their gates _and_ the three or four days of demonic goo possession that had left Waverly with a scar running the length of her back and memories that came as dreams she thought she'd never wake up from _and_ the whole Dolls getting arrested _and_ the whole town possibly getting hellfire missiled back to the stone age.

But, really, that was all _nothing_. At least not compared to the smell.

Waverly had picked up on it before but then the distractions (Wynonna's snores and then Nicole's hand and then Doc's hat and then Nicole's lips and then her hand, _again_ ) but then it had snuck back up on her, creeping _in_ when Nicole got _out_ and the air had come rushing in, all cold and frosty and smelling vaguely of gasoline and the Chinese place next door.

 _That_ was a smell, a _good_ one, one Waverly knew she could easily get used to (the Chinese, not the gas.) It was _real_ , not the kind they had in Purgatory, there was no half-assed panda on the sign and it wasn't run by a couple of paler than Doc white guys from Toronto who called it General Sows on the menu. Waverly had eaten there twice already (even once inside) and, assuming the shit didn't hit the fan in the next two hours and they didn't all, you know, _die_ , she was going back for thirds later tonight.

A twenty-four hour restaurant that served _real_ Chinese with real chopsticks and veggies that weren't microwaved broccoli _and_ snow. Waverly really did feel like a kid on Christmas and she didn't give even one single fuck about showing her hick.

Big city living agreed with her. You know, as long as she had Nicole and Wynonna and Peacemaker and she didn't have to leave the car for very long, it was _perfect_.

Except for that _smell_.

It's… it's… _fuck all_ , she can _smell_ it but she can't _name_ it… it's….

Vegetables.

The car smells like _vegetables_. _Good_ ones, mind you. It reminds Waverly of the gardens Curtis used to plant, the ones Gus buried him in.

"That's just fucking _weird_ ," Wynonna said to her one night. They were sitting outside the homestead in their fancy dancy folding chairs, passing a bottle of whiskey back and forth between them (mostly Waverly passing it _back_ to Wynonna) (she'd stolen the _less_ than good stuff from Shorty's and Waves had a more… _refined_ palate.) "I mean, really, you ever gonna eat anything from there again?"

Waverly had to admit that Wynonna had a point there.

"Maybe not," she said. "But you weren't there all those springs, when everything started to grow and sprout." Waverly leaned back in her chair, her eyes drifting shut as she remembered the way it would always happen after the first good rain. "You could smell it," she said, "like it was _right there_ and you could reach out and grab it, like you could hold onto the life that was seeping back into everything."

Wynonna snorted. "Dude, they were _tomatoes_."

They were. Tomatoes and cucumbers and whatever other seeds Gus could get his hands on that year, whatever he saw at the farmer's markets, the one in Purgatory and the one in Vernon and the one - if he was feeling particularly… _frisky_ … and he could talk Gus into leaving Waverly for a couple of hours - in Berton.

Waverly stares out her window and pretends she doesn't see the tear rolling down her cheeks in her reflection but then she sniffs and… _dammit_ … there it is _again_.

That fucking _smell_.

It's like vegetables only not _quite_ like vegetables. Kinda like 'em but with a hint of something else, something Waverly knows, but she can't quite put her finger on it. It's _right there_ , right on the tip of her tongue (or, you know, _nose_ ), something earthy and just a little sweet. She tries to place it, like she did with the veggies and Curtis. She shuts her eyes (thinking, for just a moment, that she really hopes nothing happens to Doc while she's playing smelltective but she's _gotta_ know) and breathes deeply.

It hits her then, but it doesn't _just_ hit. It _overruns_ her, invading, crashing down around her like glass shattering from a window, the way the sweet burns as she breathes it in, the way it tickles against the back of her throat as she swallows and Waverly nearly screams.

 _Daddy_.

She knows it then - _bourbon_ \- the kind she never saw a bottle of at Shorty's, the _good_ stuff, the kind most of her customers would have had to dip into their retirement accounts to swing even two fingers of. The kind Ward kept stashed away around the homestead. It was a bottle here, a bottle there, almost every one of _them_ a revenant in their own way, a bequest from a man long since dead, left like an apology.

The girls almost never saw the bottles (even then Ward worried about Wynonna), but they saw the glasses, the ones just filled and the ones just downed. Twenty-five of them, Waverly remembers. Willa always kept count.

"One for every one," she used to say. "A drink for every one he sends back."

Waverly almost gags in the front seat, that sweet smell colliding in her head with thoughts of curling up on her father's lap, of Willa and Wynonna watching them from the dark, always _there_ , but always _over_ there, in the shadows and Waverly never quite got _that_ but she was too young and being there, curled against her father, was too warm and too safe and how many nights did she fall asleep with a honey-laced kiss against her forehead?

Oh… that's _right…_ twenty-five.

She closes her eyes and lets the smell - that _fucking_ smell - wash over her, lets Curtis and Ward and everyone else they've lost… even _her_ … swamp her and pull her under and the tears come unbidden. Waverly knows she's supposed to be watching and she knows she's not holding up her end of the plan (and it was _her_ plan, even the parts she didn't tell the others) but it's all just too much.

She'll be OK. In a minute or two. She'll wipe her eyes and she'll get back to work and Doc will still be there, fucking with his hat, and Wynonna will still be asleep in the back and Nicole will come back with her coffee and maybe some goodies (like those crab rangoons) and the past will be the _past_.

Even if it's still surrounding her with every breath.

* * *

 _ **Part Three: The Girl Thing**_

She sits behind the wheel, her tears long since gone and focused on the job at hand but… _fuck all_ … It's been _hours_ and the car still fucking smells because _of course it does_.

Waverly's pretty sure… no… not _pretty_ … totally completely without question or doubt or even the tiniest bit of confusion _sure_ that she's going to need to go a long time (like the rest of her life long) without ever smelling vegetables or bourbon again.

Maybe longer. She'll have to do research on smells and the afterlife cause no, no _fucking_ way is she spending eternity smelling… _that_.

Once her tears had come and gone and her heart had settled and she was feeling… normal… again, Waverly went looking. She wanted to find it, the source. She had a fairly good idea where some of it came from (a hint: starts with a Wy and ends with a 'never saw a bottle of booze she didn't like except that bubblegum sake and that was _hers_ anyway so tough titty'.)

It took her a while - like most of the night and a bit of this morning - to track it all down, though the bourbon was easy. There was a half empty bottle of it tucked between the seats, though that was _then_ and this is _now_ , so that's probably closer to three-quarters gone. Waverly found that about five minutes after she started looking (which was a half hour after she stopped crying over memories she hadn't remembered _until_ that fucking bottle.)

The vegetables? That's taking longer.

Nicole didn't seem to notice the smell when she got back to the car and Waverly really didn't want to ask. She'd had to spend close to an hour reassuring Nicole that the tears had just been a… _thing_ … a momentary bit of overwhelmed because new place and out of Purgatory and 'oh, look, Doc's doing the thing with the hat _again_ ' and she didn't want to seem any stranger than needed.

'Do you smell corn?' seemed, to her, like it would _seem_ strange. And _she_ was the one who smelled it.

It isn't until her turn behind the wheel that Waverly figures it out. They've been rotating seats, their spots in the car, every couple of hours to - as Nicole put it, in the most adorable attempt at leadership _ever_ \- keep things 'fresh' and 'alive' and keep them all 'on point'.

With Dolls gone, Nicole has become… well… Dolls. At least in the whole 'only experienced law enforcement officer on the team' and 'we can't go off all half cocked' and 'yes, I said _cock_ , Wynonna, what are you, _twelve_?' kinda way.

If it became any other kinda way, Waverly was going to have to reconsider some things.

Waverly's shift behind the wheel coincides with them actually calling it a night - or a morning, really - and heading back to their motel. She's grateful for the break. It's been two days and two nights and they've had no luck and every one is already on edge, tipping just past the point of being stressed and heading full on into ridiculous. It's the worry, Waverly thinks, the concern for Dolls and the panic over their home and that certainty that they're in far, far, _far_ over their heads.

They _are_ , of course, but when the hell has that ever stopped them?

It's her turn as the wheel-woman and that leaves Wynonna in the back, _again_ , and Nicole in the passenger seat and Doc finding his way out of the diner and down three blocks and then into an alley and over one street where they meet him and he slides in next to Wynonna.

"It kinda defeats the point of being sneaky if Black Badge spots us picking you up right outside the diner," Nicole pointed out when she outlined the plan and Doc complained, just a _little_ , about having to do all that walking.

(he might have complained more than a little) (and made mention of having to spend all night in the diner) ( _unarmed_ ) (and drinking the 'swill that establishment attempts to pass off as coffee and something they _call_ pie but I will believe _that_ only when I actually am allowed to see it being _made'_.)

They pick him up _and_ he grumbles _and_ he makes mention of _exactly_ how long he's planning to use the shower at the motel and Waverly's grateful for that cause it had been like twenty-four hours at that point and he… well… there's this smell...

No. Wait.

That's not _Doc_. Or, at least, it's not _all_ Doc.

It's the fucking _vegetables_ and that's the point - right as she pulls the car out of the alley and onto the main road and damn near up the ass of a double parked taxi - when Waverly realizes it's been a while, like _hours_ , since she's smelled them but there they fucking _are_ , like they'd never left.

No one else seems particularly… veggied, and Waverly worries just a little that it's all in her head, that the stress has pushed her mind just a bit too far. She can't understand how no one else even _notices_ , but Wynonna's watching the road out the window in between heavy blinks and yawns (like she hadn't slept _twice_ ) and Doc has pulled his hat down over his eyes and leaned back in his seat (and Waverly tries _really_ hard to not notice how closely their hands have fallen on the seat and how _almost_ their fingers are and she shakes her head and gets back to the matter at hand… you know… hunt the fucking _vegetables_.)

"Baby, you OK?"

Even Nicole doesn't seem to notice but she _does_ notice that Waverly seems… out of sorts… _again_ … and that's sweet and so perfectly _her_ and if Nicole wasn't munching on some chips (again) (seriously, the woman eats like she's a fifteen year old boy trying to put on weight for football season), Waverly would lean right over and kiss her.

She's sorely tempted. Chips or no chips, sister and undead hobo in the backseat or no, she's happy and she doesn't care who sees.

That's _another_ something Waverly thinks she could get used to, something she wouldn't mind spending a very long time doing quite happily (the being happy, not the kissing) (well) (the kissing _too_.) It isn't that she was never happy before. As hard as that might be for Wynonna or Nicole - or anyone else who had ever spent more than five minutes with Champ Hardy - to believe, Waverly _had_ been happy. She'd been happy with him and she'd been happy with her job and she'd been happy with her friends and she'd been happy with her life.

And if _that_ happy was because she'd thought misery was her only _other_ option and because being happy - being actively, constantly, gotta fucking work at it _happy_ \- was what kept the thoughts of bourbon laced kisses and dead or broken sisters and curses and… _bobos_ … away and, _really_ , _only_ because she didn't know that _this_ happy was even a _possibility_?

Well… she doesn't need to mention _that_.

Waverly's an old pro at the not mentioning _that_ game. She's a fucking all star. Like when she didn't mention that the plan was for Black Badge to find them (all of them), that the only way to get Dolls back was to get caught right alongside him.

Or, like, you know, right _then_ , cause she smiles at her girlfriend in the passenger seat and instead of saying 'yes, I'm fine, _except_ I might be having a stroke or something cause I smell _cabbage_ ', Waverly says "I'm fine. Just tired. Can't wait to get into bed."

It would have been fine. It _could_ have been fine. Even though she and Nicole were sharing a room - a room with only one of those… _beds_ \- it could have been fine and it could have gone unremarked upon and it could have gone right on by without Waverly blushing like a fucking traffic light and Nicole almost choking on a chip.

If Wynonna was actually asleep.

"I'd tell you to get a room," she says from the back and Waverly can _hear_ the shit eating grin all the way up front. "But you already did." She sits up then, leaning between the seats, but making sure that she's facing Nicole. "And I'd tell you to be careful and all cause I'm way too young and way too hot to be an aunt but…" She scratches her head, like she's actually _thinking_. "But it doesn't work that way, _right_? I mean, I _know_ it doesn't but it's been a while since I did the whole, you know, _girl_ thing and shit changes, am I right?"

There's a moment there - a _long_ one, like so so _so_ long - when Waverly wishes for a revenant to leap on the hood of the car or a tentacle to smash through the windshield or for a puddle of demon goo to -

"Ooooh," Wynonna says. "What is _that_? Dip?"

Wait. _What_?

Waverly turns, looking at her sister and her girlfriend (the latter of whom seems frozen in mid bite, a bit of all natural, organic, probably made out of fucking _kale,_ chip dangling from her lip) as Wynonna reaches over and scoops a couple out of the bag and sinks them - fucking _sinks_ them like the damn Titanic - into the tiny tupperware container in Nicole's hand.

"Hummus?" Nicole offers, chip remnant dropping from her lip into the greenish or maybe it was reddish or maybe it was fucking guacamole on acid looking _stuff_.

Wynonna makes a sound, something like a 'mmmm' crossed with an 'ooooh' with a smidge of a moan that Waverly doesn't _ever_ want to hear again, as she chews "Oh, that's _good_ ," she says, reaching back and slapping Doc on the thigh (another sound Waverly could die happily without hearing again.) "Dude, wake up, you gotta try this."

Hummus. Her sister who, moments earlier, had mentioned doing the 'girl thing' and had been like one _second_ away from giving Nicole tips in that… arena… was now having a foodgasm over hummus.

"Seriously?" Wynonna asks. "You _make_ this?" Nicole nods. "Damn, baby girl, you gotta keep this one. She can… _you know_ … you and _feed_ me."

Demon goo. Her kingdom for some fucking demon goo.

"This is awesome," Wynonna says, scooting up closer between the seats to grab another handful - like _two_ handfuls if she was a _regular_ person - of chips. "Waves, have you _had_ this?"

 _God_ , even when she wasn't _trying_ …

"Yes, Wynonna," Waverly says, focusing on the road and the car and the wheel anything _but_ the sounds of Wynonna _chewing_ or _speaking_ or just being _her_. "I've had _hummus_ before. I can't believe you like it though."

"Why not?"

Waverly jiggles her shoulder to shake off the chip crumbs that spill out as Wynonna speaks.

"Because there's no _beer_ in it," she says. "No beer or bacon or grease of any kind. All it is, is…"

Well… _fuck_.

All it is, is _vegetables_.

Waverly pulls up at a traffic light, the last one between them and the motel, between her and a bed that she can hide in and hope Nicole doesn't try to kiss her cause she's going to have _hummus_ breath and it's a _motel_ , they're _so_ not going to have a toothbrush at the front desk.

She leans her head on the wheel as Doc asks Nicole for the recipe and 'it's _healthy_?' and if only they had had such delicacies in his day, why the tuberculosis….

Waverly closes her eyes and waits until horns blare behind her to know it's time to move.

Worst. Stakeout. Ever.

She's never hoped to get caught so much in her life.


End file.
